Higher Learning

Starring: Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Ice Cube, Michael Rapaport, Jennifer Connelly, Tyra Banks, Lawrence Fishburn, Busta Rhymes, Cole Hauser
Written by: John Singleton 
Director: John Singleton
Year: 1995

Rating: * * 1/2   Stars       +       (Fan Bonus - )  Total: * *1/2


John Singleton wrote and directed this film which meant to illustrate a point, but didn't. His approach is caught somewhere between John Hughes and Oliver Stone as Higher Learning sought to pull the veil off of academia and expose how racism and sexism is still rampant in today's Universities.


We are treated to an ensemble cast playing characters from all walks of life, coming together at a fictitious university. Malik Williams (Omar Epps) and Kristen Connor (Kristy Swanson) are the lead characters. Both are newly enrolled freshmen who are faced with financial woe's, a new environment, and wanting to just fit in. Malik ends up falling in with a student named Fudge (Ice Cube) a senior student who makes no apology for his black first attitude. Thinking he's better than others, Malik drops out of track and loses his scholarship. He returns to track in order to regain his scholarship, but adopts an attitude that the school is "using" him. That they're only interested in his ability to win games for the University. He begins to form a slave mentality, and starts seeing things through Fudge's racist eyes.


Kristen hooks up with her girlfriends and gets drunk while partying with some frat boys. She falls for one and is led to his room where they engage in sex. Halfway through she tells him to stop and pushes him off and runs away. She then adopts the role of rape victim and joins the campus's pro-feminine movement organized by Taryn (Jennifer Connelly). Taryn certainly is sensitive to Kristen's plight, and Kristen starts developing sexual feelings for Taryn.


Another key character is Remy (Michael Rapaport), an old country kid completely out of his element. Socially awkward and shy Remy is bullied out of his dorm room by Fudge and his crew, and tries to get into a fraternity. He ends up being befriended by Scott Moss (Cole Hauser) and his friends, who turn out to be Neo-Nazi Skinheads. 


The glue that holds this story together is Professor Maurice Phipps (Lawrence Fishburne) who teaches political science, with Kristen and Malik as his students. He advises them on their term papers as well as offering some sage advise. 


While the movie comes to a climatic finish involving a school shooting and an explosive confrontation between Malik and Remy, it fails to deliver any kind of real impact upon the audience. Perhaps it's due to the characters themselves. They fail to elicit any sympathy from the viewer. Consider Malik's plight. A naturally gifted athlete who has access to a good education due to his scholarship. Yet he whines about how he has to work to hard, and all the white kids have it easy. Any roadblocks in his way are due to the color of his skin, and not his increasingly ridiculous attitude. Kristen is equally inept to gain sympathy as her "rape" fails to showcase any sense of being violated. Her sexual encounter with the boy is purely consensual up to and during the moment of intercourse when she changes her mind and freaks out cause he isn't wearing a condom. Not held down, forced against her will, or threatened, she tells him to stop, pushes him off of her, and runs out the building. She is obviously filled with regret, but rape? Even at the end she still plays the victim, internalizing the events of the shooting and blaming herself for the deaths of the students. Sadly, there is no sense of growth by either character.


Other elements of the film feel forced. The campus police, all white, only seem to harass the black students. The Skinheads attack a black and white couple on their way to a Halloween party. Remy just happens to be rooming with a Jew. Busta Rhymes seems so out of place that one has to ask what he's doing in college anyway. Six black students abduct a frat student and take him outside to rough him up, all the while 30-some white students stand by motionless because the director is establishing a sense that "white people fear black people."This all builds up to a point where it feels less realistic and more like a badly scripted MTV Special. 








SEE THE TRAILER: Higher Learning